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OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Martha Wells has written many novels, including the New York Times and USA Today-bestselling Murderbot Diaries series, which has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards. Other titles include Witch King, City of Bones, The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads and ending with The Harbors of the Sun), and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, and nonfiction.
FORMAT/INFO: The Element of Fire was republished in a revised form on February 27th, 2024 by Tordotcom Publishing in the omnibus The Book of Ile-Rien; the original novel was published on July 1st, 1993. It is 320 pages long and is told in third person from multiple POVs, including Thomas and Kade. It is available in paperback and ebook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS:
FORMAT/INFO: The Element of Fire was republished in a revised form on February 27th, 2024 by Tordotcom Publishing in the omnibus The Book of Ile-Rien; the original novel was published on July 1st, 1993. It is 320 pages long and is told in third person from multiple POVs, including Thomas and Kade. It is available in paperback and ebook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS:
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Pre-order Dig Two Graves over HERE
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Read 2020 State Of Schaefer Interview with Craig Schaefer
Pre-order Dig Two Graves over HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Long Way Down
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The White Gold Score
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Redemption Song
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Living End
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of A Plain-Dealing Villain
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Killing Floor Blues
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Castle Doctrine
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Double Or Nothing
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Neon Boneyard
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Locust Job
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Down Among the Dead Men
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Sworn To The Night
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Detonation Boulevard
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Winter's Reach
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Instruments Of Control
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Harmony Black
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Red Knight Falling
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Glass Predator
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Cold Spectrum
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Right To The Kill
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Black Tie Required
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Ghosts Of Gotham
Read Fantasy Book Critic' review of A Time For Witches
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Loot
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Insider
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Any Minor World
Read Fantasy Book Critic's Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read Fantasy Book Critic's Harmony Black Series Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read Double Or Nothing Cover Reveal Mini-Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read Part I of Fantasy Book Critic's In-depth Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read Part II of Fantasy Book Critic's In-depth Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read the Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Completion Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read the 2019 And Beyond Interview with Craig Schaefer
Read the Right To The Kill Cover Reveal Q&A with Craig Schaefer
Read the Black Tie Required Cover Reveal Q&A with Craig Schaefer
Read the Charlie McCabe series interview with Craig Schaefer
Read My Sworn To The Night Cover Reveal Q&A with Craig Schaefer
Read 2020 State Of Schaefer Interview with Craig Schaefer
Order The Doors Of Midnight over HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic's first review of The
First Binding
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Samantha Mills is a Hugo, Locus, Sturgeon, and Nebula Award-winning author who has published a dozen short stories since 2018. Her fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and others. Mills has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the Hugo and Astounding Awards. She has a Master's Degree in Information and Library Science, and she is a trained archivist focusing on helping local historical societies and research libraries. Mills lives in Southern California. The Wings Upon Her Back is her debut novel.
Publisher: Tachyon (Apr 23) Length: 336 pages Formats: Genre: Science Fantasy, Alternate History
Buy The Hemlock Queen
OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen, and sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, making music, or attempting to bake. She lives in an old farmhouse in Tennessee with her husband, children, two cats, a dog, and probably some ghosts.
FORMAT/INFO: The Hemlock Queen was published on April 9th, 2024 by Orbit Books. It is 464 pages long and told in first person from Lore's point of view. It is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.
FORMAT/INFO: The Hemlock Queen was published on April 9th, 2024 by Orbit Books. It is 464 pages long and told in first person from Lore's point of view. It is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.
Publisher: St. Martin's (Oct. 11, 1996) Length: 368 pages Formats: audiobook, ebook, hardcover, paperback
Awards: Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (1996), James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction (1995), World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (1996)
Book links: Goodreads, Buy from the Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Deborah Makarios was raised in the space between worlds and maintains an eccentric orbit.
She found her niche at the age of six when in short succession she read The B.F.G., her first Agatha Christie (Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?) and encountered her first P.G. Wodehouse (Something Fresh – saying “Heh! Mer!” is enough to make her laugh, decades later). Her personal motto is Tolle Et Lege – pick it up and read it – regardless of whether “it” is a Bible, a book or a jar of home-made marmalade.
She keeps her Luddite tendencies under sufficient control to allow for regular blog posts, but nothing can quash her fondness for old technologies. Her favourite phrases are “piston-filling fountain pen” and “annotated typescript.”
Her mission is to write books, plays and blog posts like cups of tea: warm, heartening and restorative. She believes in happy endings, the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and always having a clean handkerchief. It is, however, against her religious principles to believe in “normal.”
She lives among the largely unsuspecting populace of New Zealand with only two cats, and her brilliant, albeit marginally less eccentric, husband.
She can be found online at deborah.makarios.nz or Mastodon.
Publisher: Oi Makarioi (March 21, 2024) Length: 358 pages Formats: ebook
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wend is a somewhat average 30-something female with your typical atypical brain. She's had a lot of interests in her life–so many that she’d have to live a hundred lifetimes to fully experience them all. She's been a librarian, a yoga instructor, a video producer, a baker, a barista, an ER tech, a farmer, and a professional cleaner.
Find Wend online: Webpage
ESMAY
Filled with loveable young characters, great magical school vibes, rich diverse cultures, exciting sea voyages, intriguing astrologically influenced magic, and a little dash of teenage angst, Master of the Void is coming-of-age fantasy done right!
Welcome to the Seven Lands, a world where magic is everything. At the passing of their thirteenth birth moment, kids are tested for their magical ability and sorted into one of the five groups of power. At least, that is how it is supposed to happen. The lives of the two young boys Derrius and Orimund are completely shattered when they receive the shocking results of their tests, setting them both off on similar yet terrifyingly different journeys of tumultuous self-discovery.
Right from the start, the high levels of intrigue and wonder really captured my imagination, simply forcing me to keep turning the pages. Not only was I captivated by the smooth introduction of the multifaceted magic system, but the setting of the Seven Lands also quickly felt very immersive to me and I really enjoyed exploring this epic world in all its glory from so many different perspectives.
Normally I prefer to follow a smaller cast of characters, but I actually found that the frequently rotating POVs gave this story a deliciously addictive ‘just one more chapter’ quality. It does admittedly take a while to get a good sense of how all the separate plot lines are going to connect, but trust me when I say that the eventual convergence is simply masterful and oh so satisfying.
I do have to admit that I ended up preferring certain character perspectives over others, and sometimes I found myself wondering if we really needed all the POVs we got. For me, Orimund’s storyline was easily the most captivating, especially once he embarked on his quest of self-discovery and came in contact with all kinds of intriguing people, cultures, and creatures inhabiting this world.
Both the breadth and depth of the world building really impressed me, and I loved that there were so many mysteries and conflicting ideologies organically woven into the narrative. There are plenty of exciting reveals and clever twists and turns, which is exactly what made Master of the Void such a wonderful page turner.
That said, I can’t sit here and pretend that the pacing didn’t feel a bit rocky to me in certain parts. Not only was the passage of time rather unclear to me at times, making it hard to gauge the believability of the levels of character- and relationship development, but I also thought the middle section was just quite slow in general.
Fortunately, everything did ramp up again after certain reunions happened, and I was thoroughly amused by all the little bits of teenage angst, familial banter, and romantic tension dripped into the narrative. Moreover, there’s a looming sense of dread present throughout the entire novel, which ends up exploding in a truly exhilarating final sequence that had me on the edge of my seat.
It is truly beyond me how Raven managed to weave all the threads of this sprawling and highly ambitious story together in such a satisfying way, but here we are. In a way, Master of the Void could almost be treated as a standalone, but then there’s that damned mystifying and intriguing epilogue that will virtually demand you come back for more.
All in all, I had a really fun time with this story, and I am honestly surprised by how easily I breezed to this beautiful chunker of a book. Equal parts comfortably familiar and excitingly unpredictable, Master of the Void will offer much to love for both fantasy veterans and complete newbies to the genre!
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